North American gray wolves that crisscross the frozen tundra after migrating caribou tend to be light colored, blending in with snow and ice. But dark wolves are common in forests, possibly because there they can slink through the woods unnoticed. Geneticists have pinpointed the gene variant that imparts this black fur and determined that it comes from domestic dogs that interbred with their wily cousins thousands of years ago.
cool. more here.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Wolf In Dog's Clothing? Black Wolves May Be First 'Genetically Modified' Predators:
Slipping through trees or across snow, the wolf has glided into legend on paws of white, gray or -- in North America -- even black. This last group owes an unexpected debt to the cousins of the domestic dog, say…
As the proud owner of a fine cat, Tino, I'm happy to join the ritual of cat-blogging. I was inspired after reading a new study that sorts out Tino's kinship with other cats. Now I know that a cheetah is more closely related to Tino than it is to a leopard (right and left, respectively).
The…
Being confronted with a pack of wolves is bad enough, but if you happened to be in Alaska some 12,000 years ago, things would be much, much worse. Back then, the icy forests were patrolled by a sort of super-wolf. Larger and stronger than the modern gray wolf, this beast had bigger teeth and more…
Obviously, you don't want to help melt the ice cap. But you can help scientists figure out how and why it is happening and to learn important details of what might be one of the most important effects of global warming happening right now.
First, a word on why this is important. Look out the…
That is very cool--and it also suddenly makes the picture of migrating people more vivid. I never thought of the animals that would have come with them.
I've been hearing stories all my life about wolf-dog or coyote-dog hybrids. I was born a sceptic and dismissed most as rural Minnesota BS. I have seen a few animals that did look to me as maybe really being hybrids.
Black wolves are really strikingly beautiful animals and stand out visually from other wolves that they are with. I have to wonder if it may give them some advantage in competition for alpha male status.
Has anyone ever calculated the genetic overlap between wolves and dogs? It is probably exceeds the overlap we have with chimpanzees.
The relationships that people have with dogs is amazing. When the Aborigines crossed to Australia about 40 thousand years ago dogs rode with them in the boats. Who domesticated whom?
Cal
When the Aborigines crossed to Australia about 40 thousand years ago dogs rode with them in the boats.
That's unlikely, dingos were brought to Australia only about 4000 years ago. If the earliest humans brought other dogs there is little trace of them.
We do not really know when the dingo went to Australia. Genetic data suggests, depending on how you look at it, that domestication of the dog (generally speaking) may be many tens of thousands of years ago (and yes, there is quite a bit of DNA analysis including wolves and dogs) but the earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated dogs is about 10K ago. This is not surprizing, that dogs would have been domesticated for a very long time before the first physical remains.
The oldest dingo remains in Australia are probably about 3,000 years ago. The genetic evidence indicates a split with other dogs at about 5K according to some studies. I'm not looking at any actual data this second (actually, I'm looking at my first cup of coffee) so I reserve the right to revise this later.
Oh, I'll also add this: Dog coyote hybrids are unlikely and probably don't happen. Dogs are wolves. All the same species, by one way of looking at it.
It happens, see for example:
Adams JR, JA Leonard and LP Waits. 2003. Widespread occurrence of a domestic dog mitochondrial DNA haplotype in southeastern US coyotes. Molecular Ecology 12: 541-546.